A couple of days ago, the AWS outage took down large swaths of the internet, temporarily crippling the myriad digital services we all rely on. Everybody’s takeaway from the incident seems to be: it’s frightening how reliant we all are on one company’s computing power. And, yes, it’s true. We rely on Amazon’s cloud for pretty much everything—from our social media accounts to our banking apps to our, uh… $2,700 “smart beds”? Everybody has those, right?
For those normies out there who are unaware of the latest cutting-edge technology in sleep: people shell out thousands of dollars (sometimes, like, $5,000) for internet-connected mattresses that come with a subscription fee. One prominent example is the company Eight Sleep, which offers several digitally customizable comforts that you wouldn’t get from a normal bed—things like temperature and incline adjustment, soothing vibrations, and other weird perks. The bed’s monthly subscription runs between $17 and $25, and the company also sells a “water-chilled pillow cover” that costs over $1,000.
Unfortunately, such a bed’s intellectual power is sustained by the mighty largesse of Amazon’s many, many server farms, and when those go kablooey, it can make the beds act mighty strange. Indeed, Eight Sleep customers took to social media on Monday to complain about their borked beds (Sleep Eight refers to them as “pods”). In some cases, it must’ve felt as if the beds had endured a schizophrenic break—as they pivoted from soothing caretakers to hostile maniacs.
Some users even claimed their beds suddenly began overheating. “My pod is at +5 [above room temperature] and I am sweating cuz I can’t turn [it] down or off,” one Reddit user posted.
Others claimed that they had endured the injustices of a non-coolable mattress. “Still can’t connect to my pod via the app,” one user wrote. “I’m sending my wife your way if her bed isn’t cool tonight.”
“I got zerosleep last night, can you please have the physical buttons be able to dismiss the alarm and control temperature offline?” one user wrote.
Sleep Eight’s CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, was forced to apologize for the debacle: “The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep,” he posted Monday night. “That is not the experience we want to provide, and I want to apologize for it.” Franceschetti added that his company would be “outage-proofing” users’ “Pod experience” and would be “working tonight-24/7 until that is done.”
Victoria Arlen, a former ESPN commentator, posted on Franceschetti’s thread: “Mine is still not working — it went super haywire and still seems to be turning on and off randomly with the inability to stop or control it. I had to unplug it. I tried to get it going again and it’s still uncontrollable with the system turning on and off.”
Most of the smart bed owners’ complaints are understandable. If you buy a product (especially an expensive one) and it doesn’t work as advertised, that is obviously disappointing. However, the idea that users would be unable to sleep on the beds without an internet connection is somewhat less scrutable since, even if all the fancy digital amenities provided by Sleep Eight aren’t working, it’s still, like, a mattress, right? Just unplug it, lie down on it, and it should still “work” just fine.
That said, some users’ beds apparently became stuck at an angle, which, yes, would make it quite difficult to catch those Zs. “Would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position due to an AWS outage,” one user posted. “Cmon now.”
Sleep Eight has since added an “outage mode,” The Verge reports, which allows users to sleep comfortably even if the internet is going haywire. This mode will utilize Bluetooth to keep the bed active even if the internet is having problems, Sleep Eight’s co-founder, Alexandra Zatarain, told the outlet.
The AWS outage also short-circuited several other stupid consumer goods, including the crypto community’s Bored Ape non-fungibles. “Heads up, Apes. An AWS outage is delaying today’s ApeFest Vegas merch presale,” the Bored Ape Yacht Club posted on X Monday. “Will announce a new time as soon as systems are stable.” Critics have noted that this is not a good look for the crypto community’s delusion of “decentralization,” as apparently much of the DeFi community suckles at the very same centralized computing teat as the rest of us. Go figure.
